Hard to Believe – Mackinac Island is Michigan’s Fifth Most Violent City (Because of Math)

When you think of Mackinac Island, you think of fudge, and horses, and old-timey things, but generally not crime. However, because of math and statistics and how they work, Mackinac Island has been ranked as Michigan's fifth most violent city.

FBI crime data from 2016 was released earlier in September, and while most people didn't bat an eye, MLive.com happened to notice something weird. Technically, when you look at plain numbers and percentages, Mackinac Island is more violent than Flint.

When you look at the crime data, it's easy to see why things are so skewed. Mackinac Island had eight violent crimes (two rapes, six aggravated assaults) in 2016, but the FBI only takes the full-time population of the island (479) into consideration, and that makes the "crimes per 1,000 people" number pretty high. The thing is that while less than 500 people live on Mackinac Island all the time, there are hundreds of thousands of tourists on the island throughout the year.

So, there you have it. Mackinac Island - home to fudge, horses, a giant hotel. And also the fifth most violent city in the state of Michigan.

Northern Michigan's 9&10 news spoke to residents of the island and the police there, and people are unsurprisingly miffed by this news.